This country is entering a recession. Our jobs, wages, homes, pensions, benefits and public services are all under threat. We did not cause this crisis. It was the financial elite of wealthy bankers, investors and speculators who have put us in this situation; it was the banks that we just bailed-out who are responsible.

Without a discussion or vote in parliament, the British government has spent £537bn of OUR money bailing-out these banks, about 5 times the amount of money spent on our NHS each year.

"Where is OUR bailout?"

The British government bailed the banks out with OUR money. The banks are part-nationalised, now being managed by the British government. This means that WE own them, and they should be being run in the public interest. We must start making demands of the government and the banks, so they don’t return to 'business as usual'.

Demonstrate: Fri., 24th Oct, 5pm, meet at the Mound

• We demand guarantees that our jobs, wages homes, pensions, benefits, and public services will not be cut or lost completely.
• We demand large investments in our important public services, like the NHS and public transport.
• We demand windfall taxes on the wealthy electricity companies and our bills kept low, so that we dont suffer from fuel poverty this winter.
• We demand investment in social housing that is free from the chaos inherent in the markets.

Make YOUR demands heard!

Demonstrate, Edinburgh, Friday 24th of October. Gather 5pm at the top of the mound. Bring your banners, placards, and demands.

Do you seriously think that the government buying shares in something means that "we" therefore own it?

i raised this on another thread, to no response. i don't think 'blaming the bankers' is any better either. lest i be accused of 'sniping from the sidelines' or bein unconstructive etc, here is my original response (with some constructive suggestions).

Joseph K. wrote:

Dundee_United wrote:

We bailed-out the Banks.

Now we own them.

i understand the tempatation to adopt populist slogans, but this does require a remarkable identification with the state

i mean demands refusing cuts are fair enough (though i'm wary of demanding specific policies, i couldn't give a shit if my gas bills are kept down by windfall taxes or cutting the number of troops in iraq or by issuing new treasury bonds - it's not the job of communists to make government policy).

so rather than complaining about 'taxpayers money' and reinforcing illusions that the state represents or ever can represent our interests, i think a more consistent line would be pointing out how our needs are always 'unnaffordable' while the needs of capital are always met whatever the cost (mostly to us, of course).

In terms of the indymedia article, blaming "greedy bankers" is not just poor analysis, it's echoing the line of large sections of the bourgeoisie. you needen't write an impenetrable marxist tract to discuss the class nature and 'real economy' roots of the current crisis, e.g. this i wrote for Tea Break. blaming the "greedy bankers" is a reactionary pro-capitalist fig leaf with some vary unsavoury historical antecedents.

Please note i'm not saying nothing should be done around the financial crisis, or that we should replace accessible slogans with impenetrable paragraphs of ultra-left theory, just that a rush to populism appears misguided.

since i wrote that the global financial crisis has apparently also been localised to a "scottish financial crisis," which does look like an otherwise redundant populist pandering to national sentiments

actually this call-out out-does the indymedia post i was criticising with reactionary leftism. i mean do you honestly think banks can be "run in the public interest"? do you honestly think the state represents or ever can represent our interests?

like i said above i think the current crisis does provide an opportunity to put forward libertarian communist ideas, but this is why i'm perplexed at anarchists using it to peddle reactionary social democratic nonsense that they presumably don't even believe themselves

and this doesn't even make sense if you think state ownership means ownership by workers...

Dundee United wrote:

The banks are part-nationalised, now being managed by the British government. This means that WE own them.

Joseph, the banks got bailed out the other day the government bought a controlling stake in one of them, and 43% odd of the merged Lloyds TSB and HBOS. Add that to Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley which were totally nationalised and it is a significant proportion. But of course it's not "ours". Also, most of £500 billion was not actually "spent" either.

the govt has not yet bought any stakes in RBS, Lloyds TSB or HBOS, and their ownership of northern rock and bradford & bingley was brought about by a payment of zero to the previous owners of those banks

Joseph, the banks got bailed out the other day the government bought a controlling stake in one of them, and 43% odd of the merged Lloyds TSB and HBOS. Add that to Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley which were totally nationalised and it is a significant proportion. But of course it's not "ours". Also, most of £500 billion was not actually "spent" either.

oisleep wrote:

none of the 500 billion has been 'spent', it is however at risk

fair points, as you say the point is that even full nationalisation doesn't mean "we" own them anyway, anymore than we did before, what with the our class creating all the wealth of nations and all that - the logical inconsistency of part-nationalisation equalling full control is somewhat superfluous compared to this.

found out last night that a miscellaneous bunch of local trots and fellow travellers are organising a march like this in brighton, with a mixture of fairly sensible demands (no service/wage/job cuts) and terrible 'blame the bankers' populist analysis. i assume it's just a lazy analysis rather than an ideological one - it's a financial crisis so it must be the financiers fault. brighton solfed will be attending the march and are doing a leaflet, which should have an accessible but decent analysis on it.

it does imply that if these few 'bad eggs' in the system were flushed out/dealt with then everything would be hunky dory, which is a diametrically opposed view to the principles you'd expect anyone coming out of the marxist tradition to hold

at best it implies a complete lack of critical analysis, at worst it implies an explicit tabloid type dumbing down of the issues (and through that, the people that this is aimed at) in an attempt to gain popular support for their 19th century approach to solving 21st century problems

we've seen the same approach taken by anarchists, communists and trots over the last month or so further showing what an irrelevant shower the majority of them are

So this was actually promoted by anarchists?? I thought it was the SWP or some other leftist outfit, but I see on the blackcat threads that our friendly erstwhile 'platformists' seem to be the originators. Is this another example of a genuine and commendable desire by anarchists for more theoretical and tactical unity simply ending up in the same outdated neotrotskysist hole? There is sadly a past history of this in Britain viz the AWA etc.

So this was actually promoted by anarchists?? I thought it was the SWP or some other leftist outfit, but I see on the blackcat threads that our friendly erstwhile 'platformists' seem to be the originators.

on the anarchist black cat thread, Dundee says the leaflet/call-out was produced by an ad hoc group (presumably including leftists), isn't therefore libertarian communist, but he doesn't see a problem with this if it gets numbers on the streets. so it wasn't produced by a platormist organisation or distributed by one - it's been stressed it's not an L&S thing. the discussion there has moved on to whether libertarian communists should ever support nationalisation - i took this as an obvious no, Andrew F disagrees. i'll be getting back to the discussion hopefully tomorrow.

actually i was being too fair to Dundee, apparently the call-out was produced by libertarian communists. i'd link to the ABC thread but don't want it to look like i'm encouraging board wars or trying to win an argument by volume of posts. I'm sure anyone sufficiently bothered can find it.

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